Pakistan has bombed Afghanistan’s major cities, including the capital Kabul, and Islamabad’s defense minister declared hostile neighbors were in a state of “open war” as a cycle of retaliatory attacks escalated further.
Witnesses in the southern Afghan city of Kabul and Kandahar reported explosions and planes flying over Afghanistan until dawn, while the Taliban government later said Pakistani surveillance planes were still flying over Afghanistan.
The wave of attacks came after Afghan forces attacked Pakistani border troops on Thursday night, following earlier airstrikes from Islamabad.
The operation was Pakistan’s most widespread bombing of the Afghan capital and its first airstrikes against Kandahar, the southern power base of the Taliban movement, which returned to power in 2021.
Afghan authorities in eastern Nangarhar province said Friday morning that fighting was continuing in the Torkham border area. The province’s information directorate said Pakistani mortar fire hit civilian areas, including a refugee camp. In response, Afghanistan attacked Pakistani army posts across the border, he said. Dozens of casualties were reported and at least 12 people died.
Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been high for months, and border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that carry out cross-border attacks and of allying itself with its historic enemy and regional rival, India.
A Qatar-brokered ceasefire ended the fighting last year, but several rounds of peace talks in Istanbul in November failed to produce a formal agreement.
On Thursday around 8pm, Afghanistan launched a cross-border attack on Pakistan, saying it was in retaliation for deadly Pakistani airstrikes on Afghan border areas on Sunday. Hours later, Pakistan bombed Afghanistan’s capital Kabul and two other provinces on Friday, hours after a cross-border attack.
At least three explosions were heard in Kabul, with both sides making different claims about the number of victims and the locations affected.
A resident of Kabul’s affluent Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, adjacent to the Taliban headquarters where Pakistan’s air force had attacked on Thursday night, said he heard a large explosion not far from his house, near the Taliban’s administrative offices and ministries.
He said: “The explosion was followed by gunshots and we stayed in the house out of fear and did not come out. We only knew that it was airstrikes from Pakistan like… in October, but we did not know if anyone was killed because no one was allowed to go to the area and the Taliban media said there were no casualties.”
The resident, although he requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the Taliban, said many people in Kabul were anxious and scared. “It is clear that even after the withdrawal of US forces, the war never ends in Afghanistan… We just need to live in peace. Unfortunately, civilians always suffer anywhere, particularly in Afghanistan.”
Pakistan’s Federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Attaullah Tarar said Friday’s attacks in Kabul, Paktia and Kandahar killed 133 Afghan Taliban officials and wounded more than 200, with possible additional casualties.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said Friday that his country’s armed forces could “crush” the aggressors, while the defense minister proclaimed an “open war.”
In a post on Instead, he claimed that the Taliban had gathered militants from around the world and had begun “exporting terrorism.”
“Our patience has run out. Now it is an open war between us,” he said.
Islamabad frequently accuses its western neighbor of being behind rising militant violence in Pakistan, accusing Afghanistan of supporting the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, and illegal Baloch separatist groups.
Pakistan accuses the TTP – which is separate from Afghanistan’s Taliban but closely allied with them – of operating from within Afghanistan. Both the group and Kabul deny that accusation.
Pakistan has also frequently accused neighboring India of supporting the banned Balochistan Liberation Army and the Pakistani Taliban, accusations New Delhi denies.
Afghanistan’s Defense Ministry said 55 Pakistani soldiers had been killed in Thursday’s border clashes, with some bodies brought to Afghanistan, including several “captured alive.” He said eight Afghan soldiers were killed and 11 others were wounded. The ministry reported the destruction of 19 Pakistani army posts and two bases.
Mosharraf Ali Zaidi, spokesman for Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, previously denied that Pakistani soldiers had been captured.
The border clashes began after 8 p.m. on Thursday, when the Afghan Taliban attacked several border posts in several districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, northwest of Pakistan, on the border with Afghanistan.
The volatile Bajaur and Kurram districts, bordering Afghanistan, were hardest hit by Afghan Taliban gunfire and mortar shells. A resident in Bajaur district said mortar shells hit the village of Bara Lagharai in the neighboring Mahmund district, killing at least two civilians and wounding at least six others.
The Bajaur resident said: “The village is on the border and mortar shells landed directly on people’s houses while the village was still at the mercy of Taliban gunfire. They were shooting at security posts and the village is (very close to) Afghanistan.”
Bajaur Deputy Commissioner Shahid Ali confirmed the death toll and injuries and said the Afghan Taliban fired five artillery rounds across the border that hit civilian homes.
Tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan have risen sharply in recent months, with land border crossings virtually closed since deadly October fighting that killed more than 70 people on both sides.
Efforts to reach a lasting agreement between the two nations have failed, and negotiations and an initial ceasefire brokered by Qatar and Türkiye in October appear increasingly shaky.
Pakistan and Afghanistan share a 2,611-kilometer (1,640-mile) border known as the Durand Line, which Afghanistan has not formally recognized.
